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Series:   Elements in Theatre, Performance and the Political

Theatres of Autofiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2024

Lianna Mark
Lianna Mark
Affiliation:
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Summary

This Element is the first monograph to focus on the presence and popularity of autofiction in contemporary theatre, a mode characterised by its mixture of autobiographical and fictional materials and generally associated with the cutting edge of literary fiction. To do so, it brings frameworks from literary and theatre studies to bear on a recent upsurge in plays that explicitly mobilise lived experience and its fictionalisation to political ends. Considering a comparative corpus of state-subsidised productions in Britain and Europe since the mid 2010s – both adaptations of literary works and plays written for the stage – this Element attends to autofiction's aesthetics and politics through its negotiation on stage of three conceptual binaries, each the focus of a section: fact/fiction, self/other, and inclusion/exclusion. By probing the mode's critical potential and pitfalls, it sheds light on the stakes of self-fictionalising practices in today's cultural markets and on the role of theatre therein.
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Keywords

autofictiontheatreauthenticitypoliticallived experience
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in Theatre, Performance and the Political
Online ISBN: 9781009406970
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 30 January 2025

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Theatres of Autofiction
  • Lianna Mark, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
  • Online ISBN: 9781009406970
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Theatres of Autofiction
  • Lianna Mark, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
  • Online ISBN: 9781009406970
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Theatres of Autofiction
  • Lianna Mark, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
  • Online ISBN: 9781009406970
Available formats
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